The Forward

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Abraham Cahan , founder and until 1945 editor of Forverts
The Jewish Daily Forward Building, built in 1912, was the editorial office until 1974
Lettering פֿאָרווערטס (Forverts) in the gable of the house
Newspaper boys waiting for the morning edition of Forvert, March 1913

The Forward , until 2015 The Jewish Daily Forward , or in Yiddish פֿאָרווערטס Forverts (unofficially also: The Yiddish Forward for the Yiddish, The English Forward for the English-language edition), are two Jewish-American magazines. The English-language edition is a magazine for politics, society and culture, whereas the Yiddish edition today is limited to cultural and social topics.

Founded in the Forverts as Yiddish, socialist daily newspaper in 1897; the English-language editorial office was set up in 1990. Recently converted into a weekly and then a monthly newspaper, the two print versions were discontinued in 2019 and replaced by two electronic publications .

Both journals are published by the Forward Association, whose headquarters are in New York .

history

Beginnings and heyday

The daily newspaper was founded on April 22nd, 1897 by Abraham Cahan , who was in charge until 1950. At that time she was the General Jewish Labor federal (Bund) in the Russian Empire and was therefore close to the time of World War II in decidedly socialist and Zionist aligned. For example, in early 1917, Leon Trotsky wrote a regular column. The name Forverts - actually a German word; Yiddish it would foroys hot - was from the same central organ of the German Social Democracy, the forward , adopted. The paper quickly became the leading Yiddish-language newspaper in the United States and was of great importance to Jewish immigrants from Europe, to whose integration into American society it contributed significantly. The editorial office was from 1912 to 1974 in a high-rise building on Seward Park, which is now divided into apartments, but is a listed building.

During the First World War , the daily circulation was 200,000 copies in eleven local and regional editions. In the early 1930s, over 275,000 copies were being printed every day. For some time, the number of readers of was Forverts thus higher than the New York Times . Many well-known authors wrote for the newspaper, such as Morris Rosenfeld and the Nobel Prize winners Isaac Bashevis Singer and Elie Wiesel . The newspaper also had a Yiddish-language radio station , WEVD - known as “the station that speaks your language.” For example, Nahum Stutchkoff broadcast his popular sitcoms and the series mame-loshn (mother tongue) on the WEVD . A legendary column that appeared from 1906 was Abintl briv ("A Bundle of Letters"), in which Abraham Cahan gave the immigrants ( grine "Greens") advice on how to find their way around America. Excerpts from the column, translated into English, appeared for the first time in 1971; In 1990 Isaac Metzger published the book A Bintel Brief, which formed the basis for a graphic novel and a play staged at the Yiddish Theater Montreal . Even after the Second World War, Forverts was able to engage renowned columnists such as Elie Wiesel (1950s and 1960s).

Recent past and present

Later, the number of readers fell sharply, which is why the newspaper was only published as a weekly newspaper from 1983 onwards , initially supplemented by an English-language supplement. The English edition became autonomous in 1990, and the Yiddish and English versions have had independent editors ever since, but they still have a joint editorial team in the Forward Association . A Russian edition was also published from 1995 onwards, which was sold in 2004 and has been published under the name Forum since 2007 . The political orientation of the English edition is left-wing liberal, that of the originally socialist Yiddish edition fluctuated during the time it was published as a weekly or biweekly newspaper, depending on the author of the article, from social democratic to liberal to national or religiously conservative.

The English weekly newspaper had a circulation of 28,000 copies in early 2013 (adding around 400,000 different visitors to the website each month). The Yiddish print version, on the other hand, which had a circulation of only 2,100 copies at the beginning of 2013 and was read by around 6,000 people in printed form and another 6,000 people in digital form, was converted into a bi-weekly newspaper at the beginning of February 2013 due to growing financial pressure around; the online version was updated daily to compensate.

In spring 2016, the printed edition of the Yiddish newspaper was transformed into a monthly cultural journal. The English edition took the same step in 2017, but without (like the Yiddish) foregoing political content.

On January 16, 2019, the publisher and editorial team announced that both the Yiddish and English print versions would be discontinued in April of the same year. Since May 2019, both publications have only been published electronically.

literature

  • Jewish Daily Forward. In: Encyclopaedia Judaica , 1972, Volume 10, Col. 49-51.
  • Julian Levinson: Forverts. In: Dan Diner (Ed.): Encyclopedia of Jewish History and Culture (EJGK). Volume 2: Co-Ha. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2012, ISBN 978-3-476-02502-9 , pp. 359-361.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Matthew Kassel: The Jewish Daily Forward Is Assimilating . In: Observer , May 17, 2015. 
  2. ↑ a b c d e Ross Perlin: Why We Mourn the Loss of a Printed 'Forward'. The Nation, January 30, 2019 (accessed January 13, 2019).
  3. ↑ Kenneth D. Ackerman : Trotsky in New York, 1917: A Radical on the Eve of Revolution , at wsws.org, accessed October 31, 2016.
  4. ^ Franz Lerchenmüller: Under Marx and Engels on the work on Wall Street . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . No. 107 , May 9, 2018, p. R 3 . "The owners still have to pass under a magnificent marble arch with the reliefs of Marx, Engels, Lassalle and Liebknecht every morning on their way to work."
  5. ^ The Jewish Daily Forward: Embracing an Immigrant Community - Exhibition Information 2007 of the Museum of the City of New York .
  6. ↑ a b David Kippen: Dear Mr. Editor: Oy, the Tsoris I've Seen. New York Times Book Review, April 22, 2014 (accessed January 31, 2019).
  7. ↑ Isaac Metzger: A Bintel Brief: Sixty Years Of. Schocken, New York 1990, ISBN 978-0-8052-0980-8
  8. ↑ On Elie Wiesel's collaboration cf. "Forverts" -shrayber Elye Wizl criticizes Martin Luter King. Published online July 5, 2016, printed in the August 2016 edition, p. 11.
  9. ^ Ricki Hollander: Jewish Journalism: Focus on the Forward. . CAMERA - Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America , November 15, 2017 (accessed February 6, 2019).
  10. ↑ The Yiddish Forverts Goes Biweekly in print - Article of the Jewish Daily Forward .
  11. ↑ Teaching an Old Tongue New Tricks - New York Times article .
  12. ↑ Sore-Rokhl Schaechter: Groyse end stanchions Baym "Forverts". Published online April 28, 2016, printed in the May 13, 2016 edition.
  13. ↑ Rukhl Schaechter: After 122 Years In Print, The Forverts Moves Forward. Forward, February 13, 2019 (accessed February 14, 2019); Andrea Meisterberg: Historic NYC “Forward” Newspaper to Cease Print Edition After 121 Years. The Jewish Voice, January 22, 2019 (accessed January 23, 2019); Ben Sales: How the Forward ran low on cash - and miracles - before ending its print edition and laying off its top editors. Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 18./22. January 2019 (accessed January 23, 2019).